Chapter Twenty-Seven Naomi

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Naomi

December 2022, five months before her death

Every night that week, I’d show up at Liam’s doorstep, and he’d answer the door with that sexy half grin. “Hi.”

“Hey,” I’d reply, sliding past him into the room, trying to hide my smile. I knew I was avoiding thinking about Greystone and felt guilty.

But once I was in his bed, the night was a blur of tangled sheets, his body pressed against mine, every inch of my skin humming, and the next morning when I woke up next to him, I’d feel lit up inside.

—

On Friday, Liam and I are walking home from Sterling, where we met for dinner. He’s carrying his tennis gear because he came straight from practice, and he’s in one of his moods again.

“I’m this way,” he says as we round a corner.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve got a meeting. I told you about it yesterday,” he says. I don’t remember, but I nod anyway.

When I think he’s going to leave, he pulls me toward him, wrapping his arms around me. “You’re coming over later, right?”

“Probably not until ten-ish. I’m meeting Amy at Firestone.”

“What are you working on?”

I haven’t told Liam about Amy’s research. I trust him, but he’s a member of Greystone, and close with DuPont too. I can’t tell him for the same reason I can’t tell my sister: I don’t want to get them involved. I don’t want them to try to stop me. “We’re working on a paper on Macbeth. ” I can’t meet his eyes.

“Okay…” His face changes as if he’s remembered something. “Oh shit, I think I left my phone in your room, can I borrow your keys? I’ll give them back to you tonight.”

“Oh, sure.” I hand him the keys and watch him take off down the sidewalk. He looks back, and when I wave, a strange look flashes over his face, but a second later, it’s gone.

—

“You won’t believe it,” Amy says once we settle into our study spot in Firestone Library. “I convinced one of the English professors, Fiona Williams, to talk to me off the record.”

I sit back, surprised. “Professor Williams is my thesis advisor.”

Amy nods. “Right, I forgot about that. She’s taught here for twenty years. She knew Lila, and, apparently, just before she died, Lila was collecting information for a reporter at The Prince. ” She turns her laptop so I can see the screen. “Unfair admissions practices—bribes, gifts, information. Did you know kids of Greystone alumni were getting an unfair advantage? Like more unfair than regular legacy applicants. She found emails from the dean of admissions—Greystone was straight-up paying him to let their alums’ kids into the school…Greystone covered up their part, they were never named in the scandal, just let the dean take the fall for it. Probably paid him to keep his mouth shut.”

I swallow. On her screen are articles and quotes about various public scandals that she suspects former Greystone members were involved in over the years. She has a list of their names and lines pointing to the scandal: BP Oil Spill, Bernie Madoff, Bear Stearns. Words circled in red: fraud, bribery, insider trading. I was starting to realize that this perfect life lived by Greystone members wasn’t so much given to them as it was taken from others.

“These are just the ones that made it into the news. For the most part, they managed to keep their crimes quiet. They resorted to everything from threatening to sue to blackmail, whatever it took to preserve their members’ reputation,” Amy tells me. “Professor Williams tried to help Lila with the Prince investigation, but when Lila died, Professor Williams worried about her own safety and went quiet.”

I feel my head spin and place my hands flat on the table to steady myself. I wasn’t totally na?ve—I was aware that some members used the gray areas in the law to their benefit. Tax-related laws, mostly. Loopholes. Life insurance policies and charity write-offs. Giving their kids inflated salaries or bonuses. But this was worse. These hurt people. In the best cases, they were stealing from innocent people. And in the worst, their selfish decisions left people dead.

There had always been things I thought were odd. Sophomore year, Zee had been asked to give an interview vouching for a man’s character she’d never met. A few months after that, Liam had received an anonymous phone call, telling him to tell his father to sell ten million dollars’ worth of a certain stock.

But I’d convinced myself that belonging to this group didn’t mean I had done anything wrong. The Society had done so much good too—the Legacy Foundation, the nonprofit organization, financed children’s hospitals and cancer research, community initiatives. Philanthropy was one of the things Greystone stood for.

“I reached out to Lila’s brother again,” Amy said.

“What did he say?”

“He doesn’t think Lila would’ve wandered off alone, certainly not with a storm coming. Lila was on the brink of exposing all of Greystone’s secrets to the world. I think she was murdered.”

Amy shows me a picture of Professor DuPont and Lila Jones that looks like it was taken at Sterling. Lila is not smiling but staring straight into the camera with the look of someone with a secret.

I go cold. Who killed you?

“You have to be careful,” I insist. “If your article isn’t airtight—”

“—they could come for me.” She nods, then looks down at her hands. “I know.”

“Amy.” I grab her hand and give it a squeeze. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

Amy’s eyes tear up. She nods.

I turn back to the picture of DuPont and Lila, resolute. “All right. Let’s burn this place down.”